Do dogs belong in VA research labs? A fight at the heart of the veterans community

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A service dog chews on a bone during a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing, September 26, 2017. The hearing concerned a variety of legislation facing the committee, including the Puppies Assisting Wounded Servicemembers (PAWS) Act of 2017.

A service dog chews on a bone during a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing, September 26, 2017. The hearing concerned a variety of legislation facing the committee, including the Puppies Assisting Wounded Servicemembers (PAWS) Act of 2017. (Getty Images)

America loves dogs, but many veterans have an extra bond after serving with canine units on the battlefield and increasingly depending on service dogs back at home.

Now the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and some of the nation’s largest veterans groups are in a scrap with a government watchdog organization and some in Congress over VA medical research programs that inflict harm on man’s best friend in the name of science.

A VA investigation found problems at a Richmond, Virginia, program where researchers do heart surgery on dogs to study the development of cardiac abnormalities.

Techniques include inserting pacemakers and catheters into the hearts of dogs, destroying heart tissue and creating heart attacks by injecting liquid latex into an artery. At the end, dogs are killed and their tissues studied.

One of the reasons that dogs are considered good for these experiments is they are easy to train to run on a treadmill while their hearts are monitored.

As a result of botched procedures, one lead researcher was removed from the studies this spring and the VA tightened its research protocols at Richmond’s Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center, one of at least three sites nationwide where the VA does invasive medical research on dogs.

Courtesy of White Coat Waste Project

In a photo provided by White Coat Waste Project, a dog at the Richmond VA shows incision

In a photo provided by White Coat Waste Project, a dog at the Richmond VA shows incision (Courtesy of White Coat Waste Project)

Changes include additional reviews by the VA’s chief veterinarian of proposed dog research, more stringent scientific scrutiny of VA funding requests involving dogs and increased frequency of site visits for VA programs that have canines, a VA official told The San Diego Union-Tribune.

These moves come atop questioning of research at the Los Angeles VA on narcoleptic Doberman pinschers. The approved protocol called for dosing dogs with antidepressants or methamphetamine, then killing them and studying how the drugs affect their brains.

Now, at the highest levels, the VA is battling to save its canine research programs, which have come under assault in Congress.

“Part of our mission is to push the envelope constantly in search of medical advancements that will help improve the lives of disabled veterans,” VA Secretary David Shulkin wrote in an opinion piece this month in USA Today.

“If this legislation passes … it would stop potential VA canine research-related medical advancements that offer seriously disabled veterans the hope of a better future,” wrote Shulkin, a practicing physician.

A spending bill that unanimously passed the House in July would ban funding for two categories of invasive dog experimentation at the VA in the coming fiscal year.

Separately, the “PUPPERS Act” (Preventing Unkind and Painful Procedures and Experiments on Respected Species) would permanently ban money for invasive dog research by the VA.

Rep. Dave Brat, the Virginia Republican who sponsored the act, called the experiments in Richmond “horrific and inhumane” in a statement.

“These dog testing experiments at the VA are consuming limited taxpayer dollars, medical staff time and office space that could be better utilized to deliver health care for veterans,” Brat said.

But the VA has rallied an important chunk of the veterans community to its defense.

The American Legion, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Vietnam Veterans of America have written letters to Congress in support of the VA’s canine research.

“There are many pet owners and animal lovers in the American Legion,” the legion’s statement said. “Sometimes animal research is needed for the greater good of protecting human life.”

The executive director of Paralyzed Veterans of America said he’d like to see Congress strike a balance on the issue.

“On one hand, understand and acknowledge the tremendous gains in medicine and treatment,” said Sherman Gillums Jr., in response to a query from the Union-Tribune. “On the other hand, if it is warranted, Congress should call for greater accountability and transparency to confront waste and deviation from humane protocols in scientific research funded by taxpayers.”

Dogs accounted for less than 0.05 percent of animals used in VA research in 2016, an official said. Almost all are mice or rats.

Not all veterans agree with the nation’s most established organizations.

“I’m not going to say canine research should or shouldn’t be done at all, I just don’t think the VA should do it,” said Ben Krause, creator of the contrarian website Disabledveterans.org. “VA has a hard enough time not withholding health care from veterans on a regular basis.”

A major player in this conflict is White Coat Waste Project, a four-year-old Washington, D.C. nonprofit group whose philosophy is a marriage of fiscal conservatism and animal protection sentiment. The group offers $1,000 rewards to whistleblowers with evidence of animal abuse or wasteful spending at VA dog labs.

Founded by a Republican strategist, the group argues that taxpayers are spending over $15 billion a year on wasteful dog, cat, monkey and other animal experiments that are irrelevant, slow and expensive.

It was White Coat Waste’s complaint in March that spurred the VA’s investigation of the Richmond facility. The group filed Freedom of Information Act requests for records from the McGuire VA.

“We had known that the VA was one of the few agencies conducting painful experiments on dogs. And through our research into the details of those projects, we uncovered these series of violations at Richmond,” said Justin Goodman, White Coat Waste’s vice president.

According to Goodman, the VA has 79 sites that do animal experiments, but only three are doing “significantly painful” research on dogs.

In Milwaukee, according to the watchdog group, the VA is using 150 dogs, including beagle puppies, for lung research that includes collapsing the dogs’ lungs and dissecting their necks and heads.

“The use of dogs has been decreasing in the United States,” Goodman said this week.

“Most people would probably be alarmed that, in 2017, there are still 60,000 dogs being used in experiments. I think that for many people, even one dog being used in an experiment that they are forced to pay for is too many,” he said, adding that research outside of federal agencies is often funded by government grants.

One expert said the VA’s research is not an anomaly in the biomedical industry.

“Work with dogs is happening all over the place,” said Cindy Buckmaster, chairwoman of Americans for Medical Progress, a nonprofit group that advocates for the role of laboratory animals.

“Any time they are the optimal model, they are part of the study,” said Buckmaster, also a Ph.D. at Baylor University College of Medicine.

She said researchers are required to give dogs pain medication during invasive procedures, just like in human surgeries, but the majority of animal subjects are eventually killed as part of the study.

“That’s because the answers are in the tissues,” Buckmaster said.

The VA argues that its animal research has saved lives and will save more in the future. It issued a list of past accomplishments: development of the cardiac pacemaker, the first liver transplant, the nicotine patch, the discovery of insulin and, most recently, the first FDA-approved artificial pancreas.

White Coat Waste disputes that list as ancient history, saying the artificial pancreas is the only 21st century accomplishment of the bunch.

A University of California San Diego pathology professor said experts are going to disagree about whether dog research, and animal research in general, is effective. Dr. Lawrence Hansen, who is involved with White Coat Waste, led a successful campaign nearly 15 years ago to end surgery on dogs as a mandatory part of the medical school’s curriculum.

“We have created creatures that are hard-wired to love and trust us,” Hansen said. “It is a betrayal to then turn around and keep them in cages, cut them up and kill them.”

To him, it comes down to an ethical question: If dog research does work to expand science, is it worth it?

It’s a question Congress may take up in the coming year, with the plight and opinions of America’s veterans as added weight.

Current VA research using dogs

Studying ways of preventing lung infections in people with spinal cord injuries because they are unable to cough effectively

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